They have also identified how hashtags work and identified the four stages of a twitter event.

A hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #. Phrases should not have any spaces between the words.

Twitter users add hashtags to their tweets, but many users do not label their tweets with the most relevant hashtags.

Dr Mohamed Gaber

“A hashtag is like a virtual filing system. Users who get their filing in order from the outset will improve their Twitter presence,” said Dr Mohamed Gaber, senior lecturer in the School of Computing, who led the study.

“Strong hashtags mean a user’s views are more likely to be read, as they will be easily searchable, and they will be more likely to be included in interesting debate and the exchange of knowledge.

“This could lead to them being considered an expert on a subject, building trust and improving their reputation.”

Twitter users can click on a word that is highlighted with a hashtag and they will be shown all tweets that have used that hashtag.

The top ten most popular hashtags are called ‘trends’ and are listed on the site’s front page.

This is particularly important in the event of breaking news, as users can search a hashtag to find up-to-the-minute information.

“If we take the recent London 2012 Olympics as an example, the main hashtag would be #olympics, a hashtag that is still active today. Someone may then add the hashtag #London2012 and additionally even #cycling or #parking or any number of other subjects.

“It is important that tweets are layered properly, and that companies establish a strong hashtag for their brand or event from the outset, or they could fall foul of bad filing, losing feedback and customer confidence.

“Hashtags have helped companies anticipate potential bad PR moments. During 2012 iTunes, GAP and MySpace all listened to social media and performed u-turns on new designs as a result of negative public opinion,” Dr Gaber said.

Using a technique called Transaction-based Rule Change Mining, Dr Gaber and his team looked at thousands of tweets relating to how occurrences are talked about on Twitter, from natural disasters such as the Japanese earthquake, to international events such as the London Olympics, and breaking news stories such as the Boston bombings.

The team have also identified the four stages of a Twitter event, from its outset to its conclusion.

The lifespan of a hashtag can be as short as a couple of hours, or can last for years in the case of some slow burning science stories such as news related to the Large Hadron Collider.

“Although there is no time scale to a Twitter event, there are four very clear stages. A hashtag will initially emerge, then it will be taken up by thousands of users, then it will be used to tweet unexpected information, and then eventually it will die.” said Dr Gaber.

The four stages are as follows.  Stage one is the ‘new’ hashtag. This phase describes the emergence of the hashtag, which at this point is solely used as a way of passing on information like a natural disaster, a death of a celebrity or the opening of an event.

Stage two is the ‘emerging’ hashtag. This phase determines whether a hashtag has longevity, and is the phase in which a large number of people on Twitter are spreading the news. This hashtag is still the same or very similar to the hashtag used in stage one.

Stage three, the ‘unexpected’ hashtag sees the emergence of unexpected tweets, taking the hashtag in different directions and being combined with different hashtags. Jokes, political platforms or complaints are all examples of this.

Stage four is the ‘death’ of the hashtag. The hashtag, and the conversation, is over. The information is no longer of interest to the Twitter audience, and the hashtag dies.

The team is now looking to apply their findings to case studies of recent events such as the death and funeral of Margaret Thatcher and the recent Boston manhunt.

Dr Gaber’s research will be presented on June 9 2013 at The 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, Zakopane, Poland by Mariam Adedoyin-olowe, the PhD student at the University of Portsmouth, who works on this project. You can view the paper here http://eprints.port.ac.uk/11158/1/TRCM.pdf

Dr Rebecca Stores

These children often suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea, a condition which affects their breathing during sleep. Health professionals rely on parents’ reports about their child’s sleep, including restlessness, snoring and other forms of noisy breathing, when screening for the condition.

In the past, there has been some uncertainty among health professionals about the accuracy of these reports. However, this study, by a researcher at the University of Portsmouth, shows parents’ reports are backed up by objective measures of activity during sleep and sound recordings.

This finding could help health professionals diagnose the condition, which can lead to an improvement in a child’s ability to learn. In some cases, specific behavioural problems are attributed to a child’s learning disability, when the cause is obstructive sleep apnoea, a treatable condition.

Lead researcher Dr Rebecca Stores, of the School of Health Sciences and Social Work, said: “The findings from this exploratory study support the idea that parents are a useful and reliable source of information where these aspects of their child’s sleep are concerned, and initial enquiries by health professionals should certainly make use of what parents report.”

The study, carried out on 31 children, also showed daytime behavioural problems were more likely in the children with restless sleep, those who snored and also those with lower blood oxygen levels.

Obstructive sleep apnoea is a condition in which the upper airway becomes blocked repeatedly during sleep. Each time this occurs, breathing stops for a time and the child becomes restless or is woken up, struggling to breathe and snoring or breathing noisily. Daytime consequences can include learning and behaviour problems.

Parents and health professionals may mistakenly assume that the disturbed behaviour is related to the child’s limited intellectual level, which cannot be altered. However, obstructive sleep apnoea is treatable and precise diagnosis and treatment might improve the child’s behaviour and ability to learn.

“The link between disturbed sleep and daytime behavioural problems is particularly important to recognise in children with a learning disability,” said Dr Stores.

“It could be that disturbed daytime behavior is being misinterpreted as part of the child’s general condition or thought of as the child ‘just being difficult’.

“Early recognition and accurate diagnosis are important because of the potential improvements in behaviour and learning that can be expected following appropriate treatment.”

The condition can also have physical effects such as heart complications and growth problems, another reason why early detection and treatment is important.

Researchers carried out overnight video and audio recordings of the children, measured blood oxygen levels and used an activity monitor to measure body movements during sleep. Parents’ reports included a questionnaire about the child’s sleeping habits, a diary completed on the night of the recording, and daytime behaviour rating scales completed the following morning.

The study was funded by the Portsmouth Down Syndrome Trust, now known as Down Syndrome Education International.

The study has been published online in the Journal of Intellectual Disability Research.

Quality matters: Sales of video games rise by 15% for every 10% increase in the review score 

The secret of what makes a blockbuster video game has been revealed for the first time by an economist – and it turns out to be the critics.

Dr Joe Cox, of the University of Portsmouth Business School, has found the winning ingredients in a video game are positive reviews by independent critics, followed by the game being released for a popular hardware platform and association with a major publisher.

Every one point increase in the average score given to a video game by a reviewer typically drives up sales by 1.5 per cent, with a 10 per cent increase in a review score leading to sales rising by 15 per cent.

Dr Cox said: “Reviews collated by Metacritic.com are the most powerful predictors of a game becoming a blockbuster because critics are vital arbiters of quality and have immense influence in the decisions people make about buying a particular title.

“It may seem counter-intuitive, since high quality and commercially successful games are not always perceived as being the same.  The study found that licences and franchise agreements have much less of an impact on sales than one might imagine.”

Knowing what to leave out of a game also helps avoid a flop. Video games aimed at children or teenagers, or about adventure, sport or strategy will typically reduce sales by up to 15 per cent.

Dr Cox said: “The video game market has grown rapidly over the last decade and is worth billions of dollars annually, but this is the first time anyone has carried out an in-depth analysis of the different ingredients that add up to a winning formula.

“As an economist, these results confirm our belief that products you need to ‘buy before you try’ rely heavily on external indicators of quality.  Sequels are also more likely to sell well because they reduce buyers’ doubts about whether they will enjoy the game.”

According to Dr Cox’s research, in which he studied nearly 2,000 games, Nintendo is the biggest player in the blockbuster stakes, selling more consoles and increasing the likelihood of success more than any other publisher.

Dr Cox said: “The PacMan generation has grown up and are now in their 30s and 40s. Games are now pushing forward the frontiers of entertainment and will almost certainly continue to increase in popularity as they become increasingly immersive and break down barriers to play.

“They are responsible for generating higher revenues than movies and books. ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’ set records by generating $US750m in revenue within the first five days of release and $US1bn in the first 16 days.  This outdid the movie Avatar which, until then, had held the record of reaching $1bn in 17 days.  Publishers Activision claim that the Call of Duty series has generated life-to-date sales that exceed the theatrical box-offices of both Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.”

Major game developers see higher sales than smaller developers, possibly due to having more resources to spend on marketing, but Dr Cox believes some are trusted more because they have a long history of producing high quality titles.

He said: “Sometimes a truly great game is more than the sum of its parts, with a unique look, feel and playing style that shape the player experience but can otherwise be difficult to quantify.  However, this research demonstrates that there are a number of measurable and predictable factors that associate with blockbuster titles.”

The research is published in Managerial and Decision Economics.

Dr Karen Shalev Greene

International experts in missing people are to meet for the first time to share good practice and findings from research.

The University of Portsmouth is hosting the three-day conference in June with speakers coming from a wide range of disciplines and from countries including Canada, the US, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK.

Why children go missing, what role mental health has to play in those who go missing, when a parent abducts their own child, the geographical area missing people are most likely to be found in, the relationship between police and the families of missing people and people who go missing in the aftermath of a major disaster are some of the many subjects that will be discussed.

Researcher Dr Karen Shalev Greene, a specialist in missing people from the University’s Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, is the conference organiser.

She said: “This is the first time experts in a range of areas related to missing people will come together to discuss what we know and where more research is needed.

“We expect a big turnout and everyone is invited, whether they are academics; police; social, health and youth workers; NGOs and even family members of missing people.”

The conference, Missing Children and Adults ‘Working Across Borders’, will include speakers from national police, UK Missing Persons Bureau, and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. It is being held at the University’s Richmond and Portland buildings from June 18-20.

To find out more and to register, visit the Centre for the Study of Missing Persons website http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/academic/icjs/csmp/conference/

More research needed: Dr Joanna Scurr, right

More than 400 women who took part in the London Marathon last year reported experiencing breast pain when exercising, according to new research.

The large-scale study of 1,285 female marathon runners found that a third of women (411 in total) experienced breast pain, with more than half describing the pain they felt as discomforting.  A further 21 per cent said the pain caused them distress, was horrible or was excruciating.

It is the first piece of research to establish the link between breast pain and breast size, identifying that pain increases with breast size.

The research was led by Dr Nicola Brown at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham with colleagues at the University of Portsmouth’s Research Group in Breast Health of which Dr Brown is also a member. Earlier studies by Dr Joanna Scurr, at the University of Portsmouth, have found when running, women’s breasts move up to 21cm.

In the current study more than 200 women said that breast pain was severe enough to affect their exercise behaviour and 61 women reported the use of medication to relieve symptoms.

Worryingly, the study showed that 44 per cent of respondents hadn’t done anything to relieve their symptoms, suggesting that women may accept pain as part of exercise. It highlights the lack of effective treatment methods available and the need for more research on breast pain treatment to allow women to exercise in greater comfort and without pain.

Those taking part weighed, on average, 62.7kg, were 1.65m tall and had a body mass index of 22.9, well within the ideal healthy range. The women wore 56 different bra sizes ranging from an AA cup to an H cup, and under-band measurements ranged from 28-40 inches. The most common bra size was 34B.

Those who had never had children were more likely to experience pain (35 per cent), than those who had given birth (28 per cent). Of those who experienced pain, more women experienced pain when participating in vigorous physical activity (64 per cent), compared to moderate physical activity (54 per cent).

Dr Brown said: “This is the first time a scientific study of breast pain in women marathon runners has been done and the results were shocking.

“The link between breast pain and exercise has not been formally established, but given so many women in this survey identified exercise as the most likely cause of their pain, this does have implications for breast pain management. It demonstrates the need for more research to be conducted to investigate this important issue, allowing women to exercise in greater comfort.”

Dr Scurr leads the University of Portsmouth’s Breast Health Research Group whose work has helped inform sports bra design for the past five years.

She said: “We know from extensive testing in the lab over the past five years that some bras work better than others and provide more support to women of all cup sizes. But these results show more bra manufacturers need to do more research and work closely with scientists and women to design bras which allow women of all shapes and sizes to lead active and healthy lives.”

There are four types of breast pain, also known as mastalgia, which can interfere with a women’s social, physical, sexual and work-related activities: Pain that is constant or intermittent but not related to the menstrual cycle; pain that is directly related to the menstrual cycle; extra-mammary pain that is felt in the breast but originates in the chest or elsewhere; and pain due to excessive breast motion during exercise.

Dr Brown said: “The results point clearly towards the need for women to be educated about managing breast pain and for health practitioners to manage the symptoms.

“Supportive, well-designed bras are highly recommended because the breast itself has limited support of its own and running produces much more strain on the breast than walking.”

The research has been published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The Euro zone is more fragile than previously thought

Financial shocks coming from weak Euro zone countries are three times more likely to destabilise the region’s economies than shocks from richer Euro zone countries, according to new research.

Research by Dr Nikolaos Antonakakis, an applied Economist at Portsmouth Business School, is among the first to find compelling – and unexpected – evidence of a severe financial contagion risk from weaker countries in the European Union.

The results challenge the arguments for a single European currency and suggest a need to re-examine the single currency in the new post-economic crisis era.

Dr Antonakakis said: “The findings highlight the increased vulnerability of the Euro zone from the destabilising shocks originating from beleaguered countries in the periphery.

“This is the first study to have found evidence of a financial contagion effect where what happens in weaker Euro zone countries spills over to the rest of the region. Most people assume the effect is the other way around. It is counter-intuitive and suggests there is probably a need to reassess the effectiveness of the EU directorate economic policies.”

Dr Antonakakis studied the difference between the 10-year government bond yields  of nine euro zone countries – Austria, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain – between March 2007 and June 2012; a turbulent period encompassing both the global financial crisis and the Euro zone debt crisis.

The data from the nine states was compared with German government bond yields of the same maturity over the same period and all data was collected from Bloomberg. The results provide information on whether each country is a receiver or a transmitter of economic shocks.

Dr Antonakakis said: “These results are of great importance because, for instance, changes in government bond yield spreads in other Euro zone countries can be a good indicator of future changes and their repercussions.

“Shocks coming from the periphery have, on average, three times the destabilising force on other countries than shocks coming from the core, richer nations. This indicates a decoupling effect of countries on the periphery and those at the core that may challenge the argument for a single currency in the countries examined.”

Until now, very little was known about the interdependencies and complex links between Euro zone economies during the debt crisis and global economic downturn.

He said: “The results have important policy implications and can be used to change for the better how governments and regions manage the balance of austerity measures and growth-promoting initiatives.

“The cost of severe austerity measures is not just economic, it has human lives at its heart. If we can produce models which can be used to predict the effect of different scenarios they could be used to help stave off some of the more barbaric measures used to contain economic problems.”

Dr Antonakakis, a senior lecturer in economics and finance, has been invited to present his research alongside world leaders in the field at the SIRE Econometrics Workshop in Glasgow in May. Fellow presenters include Cambridge Professor Hashem Pesaran, editor of Journal of Applied Econometrics, one of the top five econometric journals in the world; Professor Paolo Zaffaroni, Imperial College; Professor Valentina Corradi, Warwick; and Rod McCorie, St Andrews.

Dr Diana Fleischman

Women who have been abused and who experience strong mood changes in tandem with their menstrual cycle also feel pain more acutely than other women, according to new research.

Dr Diana Fleischman, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Portsmouth, and colleagues in the US, are the first to examine links between menstrually-related mood disorder and a history of physical or sexual abuse.

Menstrually-related mood disorder is characterised by emotional and physical symptoms that come and go depending on the time of the month and which affect about one in ten women.

It is more severe than pre-menstrual tension which affects about one in three women.

Clinically, symptoms of menstrually-related mood disorders are equivalent to major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorder for the impact they can have on a woman’s quality of life.

According to government figures, 1.6m women and girls in the UK suffered some form of abuse in the last year, which means 160,000 women and girls in the UK are likely to feel pain more severely than others.

The results of this study add to the growing body of evidence that such women may be a clinically distinct sub-group of patients.

The research is published in the journal Health Psychology.

Dr Fleischman said: “It seems that a history of abuse and menstrually-related mood disorder both influence pain sensitivity, and that women who have both of these show the lowest pain thresholds. These findings may help explain why some women are more likely to suffer chronic pain or pain syndromes.”

The authors ran a series of experiments on pain thresholds on 126 women divided into four groups: Those who had been abused and suffered menstrual-related mood disorder; those who had been abused but didn’t suffer mood swings; those who had never been abused and suffered mood swings; and those who had never been abused and didn’t suffer from mood swings.

All of the women took part in two pain tests – holding their hand in an ice water bath and tightening a tourniquet on the upper arm – and they were asked to describe their pain on a scale of one to ten. The women also had their blood levels of stress-related norephinephrine and cortisol monitored throughout the tests.

Women who experienced mood swings and had a history of abuse could cope with the pain for significantly less time than other women, described the pain as more intense and unpleasant, and had the lowest baseline levels of stress, indicating they felt the pain more acutely.

The science of giving: Dr Joe Cox

A team headed by an economist at the University of Portsmouth has won £750,000 to establish why people give up their time to help scientists better understand some of the biggest mysteries, from searching for the cure for cancer to trying to understand the galaxies that fill our Universe.

Dr Joe Cox, of the Portsmouth Business School, will lead a team from Oxford, Manchester and Leeds Universities and colleagues from Portsmouth’s world-leading Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, to find out more about the people who volunteer to help online science projects.

The grant for the three-year project was awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of the Research Councils UK digital economy theme.

Dr Cox said: “Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world are giving their time to help find a cure for cancer, or to better understand the nature of the Universe, or patterns of global warming, but we don’t yet have a detailed understanding of the processes that drive these initiatives, which are more complex than they may first appear.

“The growth of the digital economy has dramatically affected the ways people interact with each other and engage in different activities, but little is known about the changing nature of volunteering and crowd-sourcing in this context.

“This grant will allow us to formulate new economic models to explain the choices, motivations and behaviours of digital volunteers.”

The project will also investigate ways in which volunteering can be optimised and sustained through strategic interactions and interventions on the part of the managers of these resources.

Dr Cox will be working with Dr Karen Masters of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at Portsmouth to study the Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org), a highly successful and diverse cluster of online citizen science and crowd-sourcing projects inspired by the success of Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org) and now includes more than 20 projects including  Cell Slider (www.cellslider.net) and Seafloor Explorer (www.seafloorexplorer.org). Volunteers on these initiatives give up their time to interpret and classify data of scientific interest, ranging from images of distant galaxies to weather patterns and cancer cells.

Dr Masters is project scientist for Galaxy Zoo.

She said: “We hope this grant win will help us to understand how to improve the volunteer experience on Zooniverse projects so that people can feel confident they are contributing to real science when they spend time on our sites, and also gain the maximum enjoyment from the experience.”

Dr Cox said: “Technology has made it possible for the average person on the street to make a real contribution towards our understanding of the universe, the modelling of climate change and the development of a cure for cancer.

“Our research will show how these initiatives can encourage more people to volunteer, as well as enhancing the depth of their engagement, which will help to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge and create significant social value.”

The findings will be of “considerable interest” to web communities and the broader voluntary sector, he said, and is likely to also have significant implications for commercial projects that make use of crowd-sourcing, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

The research partners include Dr Chris Lintott, Oxford University, Dr Anita Greenhill, University of Manchester, and Dr Gary Graham, University of Leeds.

Researchers have found that people felt about 40 per cent less pain, and were able to stand pain for about 45 per cent longer, when they used reflexology as a method of pain relief.

This is the first time this widely used therapy has been scientifically tested as a treatment for acute pain, meaning it may be used to complement conventional drug therapy in the treatment of conditions associated with pain such as osteoarthritis, backache and cancers.

Reflexology is often associated with the feet

Participants attended two sessions, in which they were asked to submerge their hand in ice water. In one of the sessions they were given reflexology before they submerged their hand, and in the other session they believed they were receiving pain relief from a TENS machine, that was not actually switched on.

Dr Carol Samuel, who is a trained reflexologist and who carried out the experimental procedures at the University of Portsmouth as part of her PhD, said: “As we predicted, reflexology decreased pain sensations. It is likely that reflexology works in a similar manner to acupuncture by causing the brain to release chemicals that lessen pain signals.”

The researchers found that when the participants received reflexology prior to the session they were able to keep their hand in the ice water for longer before they felt pain, and that they could also tolerate the pain for a longer period of time.

Dr Ivor Ebenezer, co-author of the study, said:  “We are pleased with these results. Although this is a small study, we hope it will be the basis for future research into the use of reflexology”

Dr Carol Samuel

Reflexology is a complementary medical approach, which works alongside orthodox medicine, in which pressure may be applied to any body area but is commonly used on either the feet or hands. In this study reflexology was applied to the feet.

Dr Ebenezer from the Department of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences and Dr Samuel used a small study of 15 people to determine whether reflexology would be more effective than no pain relief at all.

Dr Ebenezer said: “Complementary and alternative therapies come in for a lot of criticism, and many have never been properly tested scientifically. One of the common criticisms by the scientific community is that these therapies are often not tested under properly controlled conditions.

“When a new drug is tested its effects are compared with a sugar pill. If the drug produces a similar response to the sugar pill, then it is likely that the drug’s effect on the medical condition is due to a placebo effect”.

“In order to avoid such criticism in this study, we compared the effects of reflexology to a sham TENS control that the participants believed produced pain relief. This is the equivalent of a sugar pill in drug trials.”

Dr Samuel added: “This is an early study, and more work will need to be done to find out about the way reflexology works.

“However it looks like it may be used to complement conventional drug therapy in the treatment of conditions that are associated with pain, such as osteoarthritis, backache and cancers“.

The study has been published in the Journal of Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice.

Making every decision smarter: Dr Alessio Ishizaka

Research might have provided an answer to the question most business managers ask – how to know more about every individual customer and their preferences.

In a study of how students select a bank, researchers at the University of Portsmouth have tested a model which predicts with much greater accuracy than previous models why people choose one product over another.

Dr Alessio Ishizaka, a specialist in decision analysis at Portsmouth Business School, and his co-author, Nam Hoang Nguyen, MSc financial decision analysis student, have published their case study in the journal Expert Systems with Applications.

Dr Ishizaka said: “Understanding consumer needs is one of the holy grails of good business but old models for determining what people want are imprecise. These assumed everyone has the same degree of fuzziness or imprecision about what they want, and this is clearly not the case.

“The new model gives businesses much greater power to predict the variables of human choice with all its vagueness and imprecision. Having a better understanding of the precise preferences of each customer will bring major benefits to companies.”

The new model, called calibrated fuzzy AHP, combines the best of ‘fuzzy set theory’ and ‘Analytic Hierarchy Process’ (AHP). Each is considered good at predicting some aspects of human choice, but neither was elastic enough to give a true picture of choices customers might make.

The calibrated fuzzy AHP tool could be used by any person and for any decision, including choosing suppliers, ranking products, and deciding on a new location for a company to be based.

Dr Ishizaka and Nam applied the combined model to a small-scale test of what 40 students consider the most important when opening a student bank account.

Overall, students rank banks by the quality of their personal service first. Bonuses, including free rail tickets, gadgets or cash-back offers, were ranked second, and least important were financial factors, such as overdraft charges and interest rates.

Dr Ishizaka said: “The development of an appealing product is likely to have a long-term impact on the profitability of any company, but is especially true in banking where students often remain with the same bank after they have graduated and when they are earning significant salaries.

“It is in the best interests of banks to attract and retain these customers early.

“Banks now understand the priorities of customers but it has taken them a long time with a lot of trial and error. In the past they absolutely did not care about their service, but now they are extending their opening hours, cutting waiting times and being more responsive to the expectations of customers.

“It would have been more profitable if they had done this a long time ago.”

Dr Ishizaka added that it was essential to not only understand the preference of the consumer, but also to have a strategy in place to meet their expectations.

The new model is a starting point and the researchers hope to study it further and combine it with other Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques.